Although its title suggests that it's the more appropriate disc for Halloween, only a few songs on Black Angels have sufficient haunting ability, unless you want to count the sound of that old haunt Charles Ives singing a medley of battle songs that he composed during World War I. The first movement of the title track, "Black Angels" sounds like bats flying from Hell. It gets calmer in the second movement, but it's still sad and haunting, and interspersed with those bat sounds, which return again in full cacophany in the third movement, whose last refrain is fittingly called "Night of the Electric Insects."

The other most fitting Halloween tune on this disc is "Doom. A Sigh." Written by a Hungarian and incorporating the lamentations in song of a now-defunct ancient Hungarian tribe that the composer recorded in the 1970's. The piece would be right at home with those of Night Prayers. The songs of the Hungarian women are like voices crying in the night, (Rachel crying for her children always comes to my mind when I hear it.) and the percussive accompaniment duplicates the stacatto sound of machine guns. Sadly, this particular group of Hungarians were "removed" and "resettled" after the composer recorded them. They didn't fit in with the communist regime's vision for the country.

Less haunting, but more beautiful is the sixteenth century hymn "Spem in Alium" which portrays in music the story of Judith, the Jewish heroine who saved her people from the invading Babylonians, and Shostakovich's "Quartet No. 8" which, although it's overall tone is mournful, has too many playful moments to be recommended soley for haunting.

They may be jarring to the ears and the nerves at any other time, but played on Halloween, these two discs can strike just the right chord.